Magic Online Holiday Festival

We all have our holiday traditions—the things that define each of our end-of-year festivities. For some, it's only truly the Holiday season when turkey and stuffing are on the dinner table together once more. For others, it's the smell of pine needles, or seeing the first snow, or the day that eggnog-flavored coffee becomes widely available again. Here at Wizards, nothing says "holidays" like dusting off the Holiday Cube and everyone's favorite bird-themed Sealed Queue, the Poultrygeist! If Cubes aren't for you, there's tons of Vintage support coming up this holiday season as well. Yes, it’s the end of the year, and here at Wizards, that means it’s time to dust off the Holiday Cube once again. But this year, it means more than that! It means the Magic Online Holiday Festival—Cube, Flashbacks, Modern Masters, Vintage (and a Poultrygeist in a pear tree!) Let’s begin with Vintage events!

We are excited how the Vintage community has grown on Magic Online since the release of Vintage Masters earlier this year, and we want to do our part to help it grow more during the Holiday Festival. One way we are doing this is through the Vintage Masters drafts going on now. Not only is Vintage Masters a great Draft format—it also provides a way to get some of those Vintage staples. If you'd rather watch others play, you can also see Vintage Masters drafts during the Magic World Championship on December 2, and follow more Worlds Week coverage through December 7.

Of course, Vintage needs a Constructed focus too. That's where the Holiday Festival Vintage Championship comes in. This championship has a different qualification system: You can qualify for this December 20 event by going 4-0 or 3-1 in any of the Vintage Daily Events from Wednesday, December 10, through Friday, December 19. Even if you don’t have a robust Vintage collection, you’ll have a shot at qualifying for the championship. You can qualify through Legacy Daily Events during the same time period—but it’s a bit harder; you’ll have to go 4-0 in a Legacy Daily Events to get in that way.

If you qualified through Legacy, you might be asking yourself, “Why should I bother playing in a Vintage championship event if I don’t have all the Vintage cards I want for my deck?” Well, good news! In addition to the prizes listed in the tables below, we will award a nonfoil set of Vintage Masters to each of the top three finishing players in the Vintage Championship who don't have Ancestral Recall, Bazaar of Baghdad, Black Lotus, Mox Emerald, Mox Jet, Mox Pearl, Mox Ruby, Mox Sapphire, Time Walk, or Timetwister in their deck! Note, that's not the top three finishing players over all, but the top three who are not playing any of the previously mentioned cards. Theoretically, you could come in 20th place and, as long as 1st through 19th all had at least one Ancestral Recall, Bazaar of Baghdad, Black Lotus, Mox Emerald, Mox Jet, Mox Pearl, Mox Ruby, Mox Sapphire, Time Walk, or Timetwister in their decks (including sideboards), you would be the first of three to receive a nonfoil Vintage Masters set. This set will be in addition to any prizes those players win based on their final standing in the event. If you win one of these sets, we hope it will help you to join the ranks of the Magic Online Vintage community! (Note: These sets will be granted by Wizards of the Coast within a few days of the championship’s completion.)

Update 11/13/2014: We are excited about player response to the Holiday Festival Vintage Championship. Our goal with the additional prizes of a Vintage Masters set to the top three players not playing Power Nine cards is to enable some players who are currently not Vintage players to join the community. After hearing player feedback about this implementation, we have decided to add Bazaar of Baghdad to this list. The additional prizes are now available to players who do not have any copies of Ancestral Recall, Bazaar of Baghdad, Black Lotus, Mox Emerald, Mox Jet, Mox Pearl, Mox Ruby, Mox Sapphire, Time Walk, or Timetwister in either their main decks or their sideboards. Best of luck to everyone as they try to qualify!

Not enough Vintage for you? The oldest format deserves some gold treatment; we’ve decided it’s time for the return of an old Magic Online favorite: Gold queues! These 2-player Vintage queues have an entry fee of 10 event tickets, and award the match’s winner five Khans of Tarkir boosters!

Holiday Cube Booster Pack

Looking to spend the holidays drafting? How about the previously mentioned Vintage Masters drafts, the freshly remade Legacy Cube, or maybe you'd prefer the Holiday Cube with its Power Nine cards? Missing Modern Masters? We’ll be running several Modern Masters events, plus some flashback events: Mirage block and Urza’s block!

Are goofy events more your style? Last year, players had fun with Fowl Play, a Wacky Draft featuring Magic Online sets with the most birds. That Wacky Draft did kind of cheat by using Lorwyn and Morningtide's creatures with changeling. This year, we are proud to present Fowl Play 2: Poultrygeist Returns! These phantom queue events will feature the sets with the most real birds: Odyssey, Onslaught, Legions, Scourge, Eighth Edition, Vintage Masters, and Khans of Tarkir. They will close out November, running from after the downtime on November 26, through 10:00 a.m. on December 1. Have fun!

Look at the schedule below for a complete list of what drafts we’ll be running when over the course of this month-long Holiday Festival. The below list will act like one of those advent calendars that award a chocolate-a-day except, instead of boring chocolate, we have delicious Magic Online events awaiting. We look forward to seeing you on Magic Online during this holiday season!